Third decade… 1968 – 1977

Third decade… 1968 – 1977

The Palmer Township (Easton) store would be designed from the ground up to cover the continued growth of the party rental business without neglecting lawn and garden sales and general tool rental.  The building would be built around some new rental products.  The new items this store would offer office furniture, medical equipment, portable laundry equipment, and concession equipment.  The store would be built with clean storage for the party equipment and tents.  My Father found a used commercial dish washer, so the dish washing and the laundry operation could be moved out of the basement of our home.

This store was a complete departure from the rental industries view of a rental store.  Most rental stores at the time stored and displayed equipment outside.  This store was designed with all indoor storage.  The showroom would be carpeted with recessed lights.  The displays would be clean and tasteful.  For the first time we would display the party goods and the softer side of our rental inventory in front of our customers entering the stores.  The tools would be moved to the back of the store.  All the purchase for this store would be mostly new items to our rental business; however we did not neglect the core.  Lawn mowers and tractors would be displayed on carpet in our showroom.  This would be unheard of in the lawn equipment industry at the time.  Our lawn equipment displays would put many new car dealer showrooms to shame. 

We would not recreate the full garden center experience in Palmer.  We would have an adequate supply of fertilizers, and garden tools; however we would not offer the more obscure items like custom mixed grass seed, bird feeders, Christmas decorations and hardware.

The tool and equipment inventory for this store would be purchased from a Philadelphia tool rental store that was closing down.  The tools were old but usable. The Palmer store manager had a mechanical background that came in very helpful in keeping the old inventory usable. 

Even at this early point in the business the age of our rental equipment would start to become an issue.  While we had the largest most diverse inventory it wasn't always the most reliable.  Being the first and without real competition our customers were accustom to having the occasional breakdowns.  My Father would rather have 3 old air compressors rather than 1 new one.

The Grand Opening in April of 1968 was very eventful.  If my Father had been superstitious he would have locked the door of the Palmer store the evening after the grand opening and never go back.  The day started with one of the first visitors being the neighbor / lawyer that filed the injunction to stop our project.  This neighbor would welcome us to the neighborhood and explain he had nothing against our business except the other neighbors paid him to try to stop us.  That lawyer would be a loyal customer for the next 25 years until his passing.  The weather during that April day would be rain, snow, and a strong thunderstorm.  The Wheel Horse tractor rep would cut his hand during a demo and bleed all over the new carpet.  The day would end when a woman having a heart attack would be carried in and die on the display hospital bed.  After an interesting opening day the store would operate profitably until 1982 when my Father was approached with an offer to sell the building.

The machine made a snack called a flip chip

 Palmer opening day

Palmer Early Spring 1968

Seeing how efficient the Palmer Store was with a single floor clear span building my Fathers next project would be to replace the current Bethlehem store with a modern steel building.  The proposal my Father would submit to the City of Bethlehem was to rezone an acre of residential land next to the current Bethlehem store and start with a new Steel building that would eventually join and envelop the old building. This proposal was met with a resounding No! from Bethlehem zoning officials.  City officials were already dealing with an eyesore that had serious safety and fire hazard concerns.  The Cities rejection would send my Father scrambling for another location outside the City of Bethlehem.  About the same time Shell Oil company approached my Father about selling the Bethlehem property.

The Monday after Thanksgiving 1969 my Father would make settlement on an acre of land. This property was just a few hundred feet outside the Bethlehem City limits. The property was about a mile north of the current Bethlehem store.  On the day of settlement the steel building was already on its way.  My Father planned to make the move within 4 months.  A week later the snow and topsoil would be pushed off the site so the construction could begin.  After the foundation was poured a hard freeze would hit, the length severe cold weather would last most of the winter.  The brick layers and steel erectors would be bumping into each other in a scramble to get the building up and closed in.

Once the shell started to close in we would start tenting and heating to get the frost out of the ground to pour the concrete floors.  The heating and concrete project would last weeks as an almost a 24-7 operation.  We would make a late evening trip to the new store to refuel the heaters.  As sections of concrete floor dried inventory would be moved out of the old store so we could start demolition.  Most of lumber and doors from the old building would be reused in the new building.  Demolition and the continued operation of the old store would continue simultaneously.

The new Bethlehem store was rushed to open on schedule in April of 1970.  The store had no running water except roof water directed into a holding tank.  The water system worked so well we would continue to use it for the next 10 years.  The showroom lighting was strings of 100 watt light bulbs.  By 1971 the old store had been completely disassembled the remaining salvaged lumber and hardware would be saved for the first addition to the new building and other projects. 

In late 1971 as the first addition to the new building was being planned we would learned the property was about 30’ shallower than originally thought.  In the hurry to purchase the property my Father didn’t notice that the acre he purchased started in the center of the street.  This would cut the size of the addition by ½ of the original planned size.

As the popularity of the rental business grew the focus of the business would move away from a full service garden center and began to focus on growing the rental business.  My Father would make a significant investment in rental equipment.  Customer requests were always used when it came to adding new items to our invintory

It seemed anything we added to the party business was profitable.  The party business's growth was almost out of control.  Evan in 1970 we had enough party equipment to do an outdoor wedding for up to 150 people.  We had china, flatware and glassware for more than 300 people. With 4000 chairs we supplied most of the valleys college commencement ceremonies.

We were fortunate the Lehigh Valley has 5 large Colleges located within the Lehigh Valley.  The fraternity business would keep us busy during normally slow periods.  Adding casino equipment would be extremely profitable from day one.  To keep up with the demand we even produced our own craps tables, poker tables, and numbers wheels.  During the early years we were always experimenting and with the party equipment to meet customer needs.  The party rental business was new and wide open there were no rules.  Imagination and ingenuity was our only limits to meeting our customer requests.  One request from Lehigh University was to set up a 30×60 tent on a steep slope. We would construct a level Platform to erect the tent on; much of the lumber used for the platform was remnants of the Old Store.  Long before tent flooring became available, we would build platforms, and install flooring, and carpet with our rental tents.

Another new customer would come to our front door in 1970.  A Dentist from Philly had a dream of building a Race track in the Poconos.  1970 Dr. Matiolli was preparing to host his first Indy Car race at his Pocono Raceway.  We would be called on as last minute glitch’s appeared.  The first few years we would provide the scaffolding for the TV camera towers.  We would eventually provide all the chairs tables and tents required for the Indy and NASCAR races. This business relationship gave us access to all points on the race track.  Wheel Horse Tractors from South Bend Indiana would be used to push around the Indy Cars as they did at the Indy 500.  Wheel Horse would provide us the ability to watch the race from the Pit Wall.

We would drop the Scaffold where requested and on the trip I would encounter on pick up was erected 50’ towers that needed to be disassembled.  I can’t say I was ever comfortable at heights but this was something that was part of the job.    

We brought the first Skid Steer loaders to the local rental market in the late 1960's, and when a Bobcat Dealership became available in the early 1971 my Father jumped on it. The Skid Steer loader we had in rental was doing well enough to add more units to the rental inventory.  As a dealer we could purchase new loaders for rental at cost.  The manufacture of Bobcat was trying to move its loader's popularity as a farm tool and enlarge the market to include industrial, construction, and rental.  We were the perfect outlet for this task. 

I would spend 2 weeks in Gwinner, North Dakota learning the service side of Bobcat a few months later our first outside sales person would make his way to North Dakota for sales training. Rather than training a young salesperson my Father would hire mature experience salespeople.  These early hires would be too old to be bouncing around a construction site in a Bobcat loader.  For many customers this was the first Skid Steer loader they had ever seen, and without a competent demonstration the sale would be lost.  Some of us would take turns doing the demos for the salesman.  One Salesman trainee with a drinking problem would almost burn down the only motel in Gwinner, North Dakota.  Another salesman would run into some legal issues with his previous sales job in the “not so legal” substances business.

Our ability to find new markets for Bobcat loaders would never really get off the ground; however we would find new homes for Bobcats in familiar places.  We would introduce Bobcat loaders to other rental stores, along with continued growth of our own loader rentals.  Every cement plant in our area would have a Bobcat, most foundries did. The early Bobcats had lots of clutches chains and belts.  We found a profitable market for parts and service of Bobcat loaders.  With Bobcat parts and service we would service an area twice as large as the Lehigh Valley.  Our service truck would cover the far eastern quarter of Pennsylvania and some of western New Jersey.  We had enough Bobcat service business to keep a dedicated service truck on the road. 

During the 1970’s some large construction projects would come to the Lehigh Valley.  The largest and most complicated would be the Shaffer Brewery.  My Father was purchasing construction equipment as it was needed on the Brewery site.  A new riding trencher was delivered directly to the site.  It would be months before we would see it.  Scaffolding would be picked up from the manufacture and delivered to the Brewery sometimes before the paint was completely dry. 

The economy of the early 1970's was on a down turn the Arab oil embargo, fuel shortages, and cuts in steel production but would be hardly noticed in our business.  Layoffs at Bethlehem Steel and the other large manufactures would leave the unemployed workers with free time and generous unemployment checks.  Inflation and the rising cost of food and fuel would popularize vegetable gardens and wood burning stoves and the tools needed to supply and maintain stoves and gardens.  We took on a line of Franklin Stoves and a new line of chainsaws and log splitters. 

The interest in rototillers would be revived.  The rototiller was one of the first products my Father sold; however they were expensive and complicated and never sold well.  The original Rototiller line was left behind at my Grandfather’s house in the 1955 move.  My Grandfather continued to handle the sales on a part time basis.  My Father and Grandfather would renew ties with the old rototiller company that was called Troy Built at the time.  In the early 1970's as the gardening fad grew we had customers standing in line for Troy-Built rototillers.  We would modify one of our old rental vans just to haul tillers from the factory in Troy NY.  We could get about 40 disassembled unboxed tillers on the truck.  Every few weeks as Troy-Built would have a shipment tillers ready we would send the truck back to upstate New York.  Chainsaws would also sell well, and log splitters would become a popular rental items. Wood stoves never took off and were dropped.

Gardening would be a fad as the popularity would decrease as food prices and inflation were brought under control.  Will we ever see the popularity of home gardens again?  The answer would be probably not.  Many of those 1970’s garden skills were passed down from depression era parents. Today self-sufficiency is not a popular life skill.  The Troy built company as we knew it would disappear by 2000.  The only remaining sign of Troy Built is the rights to paste the Troy Built name on Chinese made equipment.

With the move to a smaller building and increased competition from a new K Mart store that was less than a mile away we would say goodbye to many products from the past.  As the old store was coming down dead inventory from the attic and other dark corners would be collected for an auction.  The Christmas decoration business would fall under the auctioneers hammer.  Hardware, paint, and swimming pool supplies would be auctioned.  As more than 100 custom trailer hitches were sold.  At the auction we would learn the custom made hitches to fit Desoto’s, Ramblers and Studebakers were worth about 50 cents each.  Brand new Toro hovering lawn mowers still in boxes would be sold for $17.00 each.

The concrete lawn ornaments, bird baths, bird feeders and lawn furniture would make the move but be scaled down. The Ski-doo Snowmobile dealership would be sold to a local car dealer and we would drop most of the competing brands of lawnmowers. With Toro selling so well there was no reason to clog the new showroom with Reo, Lawn Boy, Jacobson and Economy.  We would also trim down the full service garden center as my Grandfathers health began to fail.  The rental and sales of camping trailers would be eliminated as car bumpers were getting increasingly more difficult to install temporary hitches on.

By 1973 the Bethlehem move was complete; my Father would look towards a new project and would start a search for a third location.  The Lehigh Valley is made up of 2 counties and 3 large cities. The Valley’s population in 1970 was about 460,000 people.   Bethlehem straddles the county line in the center of the Valley.  Easton is along the Delaware River on the New Jersey border.  The Easton area was covered by the Palmer Store. The largest city in the valley is Allentown located on the western side of the valley.  My Father’s search for a third location would be on the west side of Allentown.  He wanted to be outside the city of Allentown to capture the growing residential and commercial areas outside the city limits.

My Fathers search for a location had a dollar figure attached to it; my Father would skip over his desired location as he felt the real estate was too expensive.  His search would move further and further from the population centers and would end in near the western Lehigh County town of Macungie population 2500. (Macungie is an Indian word for “Bear Swamp”) It wasn’t the best location however it was in his price range.  With a Mack Truck plant under construction across the street, my Father saw this as an area of growth. 

Lessons learned in Palmer and the new Bethlehem store would be incorporated into the new Macungie Store.  The project would include a larger building on a piece of land with plenty of room for expansion.  

This Macungie project would be slowed by township planners who found faults in my Father’s hand drawn plans.  To move the project along my Father would eventually hire a local engineer and the project would proceed.  The Macungie store would be mine I would help build it and manage it once it was open.

For the Macungie project we would erect the steel building ourselves.  The only outside sub-contractors we hire would be for the foundation and masonry walls.  Bethlehem was plagued by a brutal winter, the Macungie project would be plagued by mud.  During the winter of 74-75 the ground never froze deep enough to eliminate the mud.  We would use our high reach rough terrain 4 wheel drive forklift to set the steel in place.  Even with 4 wheel drive we would need a Track Loader or the brick layers rough terrain forklift to continually pull one or the other or both out of the mud.  When the roof panels were installed we would be picked up by the forklift in the parking area driven to and lifted onto the roof as to not leave muddy footprints on the roof. 

The Macungie Store would also incorporate the roof collection water system.   

To stock the Macungie Store my Father would purchase a complete new rental inventory, this would include more construction oriented product lines.

Like Palmer my Father would take this store in an entirely new direction with an extensive inventory of construction equipment for sale.  At the time we were adding larger pieces of construction rental equipment to our fleet.  We had been without a full size Backhoe for a few years.  One of the lines we took on offered tractors up to 100 horsepower and full sized backhoe.  Stow Construction Equipment, Essic and Western Black Top Rollers, and a fleet of new Air Compressors would be new lines of equipment for us.  Items ranging from hand tools to blacktop rollers and skid steer loaders would be on display in the showroom.  The interior would match Palmer and Bethlehem with carpeted showroom and well planned displays.  In the spring of 1975 the Macungie Store would open without me at the counter.  A few months before opening I would learn that I would not manage the Store.  When I would ask, “why” I would not get an answer. 

The Third decade would come to a close with a large footprint and name recognition across the Lehigh Valley.  With the 3 stores 90% of the Valley’s population was less than 10 miles from one of our stores the economy was struggling; however we had good product lines, a good reputation with no competition to speak of.

What would the 4^th decade bring?  My Father would make it known that he planned additional expansion.  He seriously studied a store in Pottsville Pa.  The Pottsville store would be located almost an hour from the main store.  This would be a big step because this store would operate by itself without any support from the other stores.  My Father made some visits to Pottsville and even announced the 1977 opening in an interview he gave to a small weekly newspaper.

1977 would come and go without a store or even a property lined up for the Pottsville location.  The Macungie store was only open for 2 years however the growth my Father anticipated hadn't come.  The separation between the Macungie store and the Bethlehem and Palmer stores were becoming a problem.  My Father wouldn't drop Pottsville or future expansion; however it was put on the back burner.  A few years later my Father would have his pen in his hand and a manager lined up in deal to purchase a store in Reading Pa.  When the manager prospect backed out of the opportunity of running the Reading store the expansion plans were dropped.  

Gone completely would be snowmobiles. Polaris changed distributors and Polaris was looking to eliminate dealers who handled snowmobiles as a side line.  We certainly tried to find a market for snowmobile.  The snowmobile was a product that just hadn’t come of age in a fringe snow area like ours.  In the future snowmobile trails and resorts would be built in the Snowbelt of upstate New York and destination snowmobile vacations would become popular. 

Kubota tractors would be dropped.  Of the first shipment of tractors we received we would not sell a single tractor.  After a few years the rusting tractors were pushed out the door at a loss.  Today Kubota tractors are the most popular utility tractors in the world however at the time it was an unknown product with an unknown reputation.  The quality of Japanese imports was still unknown; my Father himself questioned the quality and refused to add Kubota to the rental fleet.

My Father would often sign on as a sales dealer just for the opportunity to purchase rental equipment at wholesale prices.  The dealerships that were availible were not necessarily the name brands.  He would often take on lines because of the price.  Two brands that would make the top 5 of Losers Freaks and Orphans were Brown Trenchers and Long Tractors. The Brown Company had been in bankruptcy when my Father signed a contract to buy 3 machines.  By the time Brown cashed our check and the machines arrived the company had shut down production.  The Brown trenchers that arrived would be almost rusted solid as if they had been sitting in a field for years.  The company would send paint and new decals before they locked the doors completely.  The new trenchers would need to be sandblasted and painted before they could be used.  The assets of Brown was purchased by another company that also went bankrupt the machines broke down frequently parts availability was non-existent and the Brown trenchers were eventually sold as scrap.

Another of these unknown brands that my Father would sign a dealership contract with was the Long Tractor Company.  The Long Company was known for their tobacco harvesting equipment.  Long would also import a line of farm tractors from Romania that were produced using a Fiat patent?  Long would also build a backhoe using a drive train from a British bus company?  Breakdowns were frequent, parts availability was poor, and product support was none existent as service manuals were written in ether Italian or Romanian.   When the backhoe blew an engine the Company had no idea how to remove the engine.  We were told the engine was the first step in assembly and the tractor is assembled around the engine.  The repair would include cutting the frame and re-welding it as our only option in completing the repair.  Long Tractors are still being imported if you see one for sale “don’t buy it”.  My Father would be stung again in the 1990’s when a Chinese built tractor he purchased exploded while being started sending large chunks of the engine hundreds of feet.

As 1978 was approaching we would be celebrating our 30^th anniversary of our relationship with Toro, 20 years with Wheel Horse tractors, and 6 years with Echo trimmers, leaf blowers and chainsaws.  We built these lines with our reputation to provide a quality product, with quality service.  Echo was an unknown Japanese product when it came into our store.  Echo would sell well just because the customers respected our reputation for quality.